About the Journal

North American Journal of Medical Sciences is an international, peer-reviewed general medical journal regularly publishing 12 issues per year. The journal's full text is available online at http://www.najms.org. The journal allows free access to its contents, and permits authors to self-archive final accepted version of the articles. The journal does not charge for submission, processing or publication of manuscripts and even for color reproduction of photographs.

Scope of the Journal

The journal publishes important advances in medical sciences that include clinical and basic studies of all aspects of medical and bio-medical sciences in human, animal and cell-line studies.

The Editorial Process

A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to North American Journal of Medical Sciences only, and it has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis). The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with the Journal for all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. On submission, editors review all submitted manuscripts initially for suitability for formal review. Manuscripts with insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical flaws, or lack of a significant message are rejected before proceeding for formal peer-review. Manuscripts that are unlikely to be of interest to the North American Journal of Medical Sciences readers are also liable to be rejected at this stage.

Manuscripts that are found suitable for publication in North American Journal of Medical Sciences are sent to expert reviewers. During submission, the author is requested to provide names, affiliations and Emails of eight qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript. The reviewers should not be affiliated with the same institutes as the author(s). The journal follows a double-blind review process, wherein the reviewers and authors are unaware of each other’s identity. The comments and suggestions made from reviewers are conveyed to the corresponding author. If required, the author is requested to provide a point by point response to reviewers’ comments, and submit a revised version of the manuscript. This process is repeated till reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript.

Manuscripts accepted for publication are copy edited for grammar, punctuation, print style, and format. Page proofs are sent to the corresponding author. The corresponding author is expected to return the corrected proofs within 48 hours. It may not be possible to incorporate corrections received after that period. The whole process of submission of the manuscript to final decision and sending/receiving proofs as well is completed online. To achieve faster and greater dissemination of knowledge and information, the journal publishes articles online as ‘Ahead of Print’ immediately on acceptance.

Clinical Trial Registry

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors requires that “any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome” must be registered before the start of patient enrollment. Trials in which the primary goal is to determine pharmacokinetics are exempt. To be acceptable, a registry must be owned by a non-for-profit entity, be publicly accessible, and contain the twenty fields proposed by the World Health Organization. A list of acceptable registries is on the ICMJE website.

Authorship Criteria

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:

1. Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
3. Final approval of the version to be published.

Conflicts of Interest

All authors must disclose any actual or potential conflicts of interest, including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations, with the study. Authors should also disclose conflict of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.

Submission of Manuscripts

All manuscripts must be submitted online through the website http://www.journalonweb.com/najms. New users will have to register at this site. Registered authors can keep track of their articles after logging into the site using their user name and password. Authors do not have to pay for submission, processing or publication of articles. If you experience any problems, please contact the editorial office by e-mail at editor@najms.org
Prior to sending your electronic submission, please ensure that the manuscript has been prepared according to this Instruction, with special emphasis on the style of the manuscript and reference list. The provision of eight qualified reviewers is mandatory for all submissions. The submitted manuscripts that are not as per the “Instructions to Authors” would be returned to the authors for technical correction before they undergo peer-review.

Generally, the manuscript should be submitted in the form of two separate files:

Title Page and Cover Letter:

1. The type of manuscript (original article, case report, review article, Letter to editor, etc.);
2. Title. Concise and informative, fewer than 150 characters. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Do not use abbreviations and formulae;
3. The names of all authors (with their highest academic degrees, designation and affiliations) and name(s) of department(s) and/or institution(s) to which the work should be credited. All information which can reveal author's identity should be here;
4. The total number of pages, total number of photographs and word counts (excluding the references, tables and abstract);
5. Acknowledgement, if any. One or more statements should specify 1) contributions that need acknowledging but do not justify authorship, such as general support by a departmental chair; 2) acknowledgments of technical help; and 3) acknowledgments of financial and material support, which should specify the nature of the support;
6. If the manuscript was presented as part at a meeting, the organization, place, and exact date on which it was read.
7. Registration number of a clinical trial and where it is registered (name of the registry and its URL), and
8. The name, address, e-mail, and telephone number of the corresponding author, who is responsible for communicating with the other authors about revisions and final approval of the proofs.

Blinded Article File:
The manuscript must not contain any mention of the authors' names or initials or the institution at which the study was done or acknowledgements. Page header can not include the authors' names. The main text of the article, beginning from Abstract till References (including tables) should be in this file. Do not incorporate images in the file. The pages should be numbered consecutively, beginning with the first page of the blinded article file.

Images:
Submit good quality color images. Each image should be less than 4 MB in size. Size of the image can be reduced by decreasing the actual height and width of the images (keep around 1800 x 1200 pixels or 5-6 inches). Images can be submitted as jpeg files. Legends for the figures/images should be included at the end of the article file

The Certification Form:
The Certification Form has to be signed by all the contributors, and send as a scanned file.

Preparation of Manuscripts

Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with "Author Information" of North American Journal of Medical Sciences. Before submitting a manuscript, authors are requested to check for the latest instructions of the journal.
All manuscript published in North American Journal of Medical Sciences must be written in English, either American or British style. To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the 'spell-check' and 'grammar-check' functions of your word processor.

Permissions

Authors must submit written permission from the copyright owner (usually the publisher) to use direct quotations, tables, or illustrations that have appeared in copyrighted form elsewhere, along with complete details about the source. Any permission fees that might be required by the copyright owner are the responsibility of the authors requesting use of the borrowed material.

Types of Manuscripts

Original articles:
The word count of original articles should be within 3000 words (including Abstract and references). Limit the abstract to 200 words. Not more than 30 references and 4 tables or figures can be included. Six authors at most are acceptable.
Original Articles should be divided into the sections of Abstract, Key words, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, References, Tables and Figure legends.

Abstract
Original Article must be submitted with a structured abstract as described below:

• Background
• Aims
• Material & Methods
• Results
• Conclusions

1. Provide the detailed information to allow the work to be reproduced. The previously reported methods should be indicated by a reference.
2. Specify the statistical methods used in the study. Avoid non-technical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as 'random' (which implies a randomizing device), 'normal', 'significant', 'correlations', and 'sample'. Define statistical terms, abbreviations, and most symbols. Specify the computer software used. All P values should be reported as exact numbers to 2 digits past the decimal point, regardless of significance, unless they are lower than 0.01, in which case they should be presented to 3 digits. Express any P values lower than 0.001 as P<.001. P values can never equal 0 or 1. Use upper italics P.

Review Articles:
The word count of Review Articles should be not more than 4000 words (excluding Abstract, Table and Reference List). The manuscript may have 80 references and 2 tables or figures. An unstructured Abstract (less than 200 words) describing the methods used for locating, selecting, extracting, and synthesizing data should be included.
The subtitles would depend upon the topic reviewed.
The journal expects the authors to give post-publication updates on the subject of review. The update should be brief, covering the advances in the field after the publication of the article and should be sent as a letter to editor, as and when major development occurs in the field.

Case Report:
These manuscripts are short report of original studies, or report of four or fewer patients, could be of up to 900 words (excluding Abstract and references) with 10 references and 2 tables or figures at most. Case Reports can have up to four authors.
The manuscripts should include the following sections: Abstract (structured), Key words, Introduction, Case report, Discussion, Reference, Tables and Legends.

Abstract
It should be structured with following subtitles: Context, Case Report, and Conclusions. 150 words or less, do not use nonstandard abbreviations, footnotes or references.

Key words
Up to 10 key words or short phrases are provided following the Abstract.
The text of manuscript should include the following subtitled sections:

Introduction
Summarize the context for the report.

Case Report
Report the data of the patient(s) in a logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations. Do not duplicate data in graphs or tables.

Discussion
Emphasize the novel situation and add important insights into mechanisms or diagnosis or treatment, as well as, the conclusions that follow them. Do not repeat in detail data given in other sections of the paper.

Conclusions
The conclusions of the manuscript may be presented in a short conclusions in the Discussion section.

Letter to the Editor:
These manuscripts should only contain content pertinent to the articles published in North American Journal of Medical Sciences within 3 months. Letters should have three or less authors. The article can have up to 500 words and 5 references.

Letters in Reply
Replies by authors should have no more than 3 authors. The Letter in Reply can have up to 300 words.

References
Cite original sources when possible. All references must be numbered consecutively in the text, place each citation immediately after the term or phrase and usually before the period; they should appear like the following: [1, 2, 5, 6] or [7-9]. When listing references, follow abbreviate names of journals according to the journal list in PubMed. Citations in the reference list should contain named authors up to 6; if more than 6, list the first 3 followed by “et al.” Journal names should be abbreviated as in the Index Medicus.

Some examples of the NAJMS reference style are shown below. Please carefully follow the reference style precisely:

• Journal Article: Urita Y, Watanabe T, Imai T, et al. Influence of chronic ethanol consumption on extra-pancreatic secretory function in rat. North Am J Med Sci 2009; 1: 239-243.
• Book Chapter: Ramphal R. Infections due to Pseudomonas species and related organisms. In: Fauci AS, Braunwald E, Kasper DL. eds. Harrison Principles of Internal Medicine. 17th ed. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Medical; 2008:949-956.
• Complete Book: Margulis L: Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1970.
• Link/URL: U.S. positions on selected issues at the third negotiating session of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Washington, D.C.: Committee on Government Reform, 2002. (Accessed March 4, 2002, at http://www.house.gov/reform/min/inves_tobacco/index_accord.htm).
• Unpublished work accepted for publication but not yet released should be included in the reference list with the words “in press” in parentheses beside the name of the journal concerned. References must be verified by the author(s) against the original documents.

• Include a title for each table (no longer than 15 words) in a single file.
• Tables should be self-explanatory and should not duplicate textual material.
• Tables with more than 10 columns and 25 rows are not acceptable.
• Explain all nonstandard abbreviations in footnotes.
• For footnotes use the following symbols: *, †, ‡, §, ||,¶ , **, ††, ‡‡
• Tables with their legends should be provided at the end of the text after the references. The tables along with their number should be cited at the relevant place in the text
• Submit tables in a word processing—not an imaging—format.
• Identify statistical measures of variations, such as SD or SE. Do not merely repeat information in the text.
• All P values should be reported as exact numbers to 2 digits past the decimal point, regardless of significance, unless they are lower than 0.01, in which case they should be presented to 3 digits. Express any P values lower than 0.001 as P<.001. P values can never equal 0 or 1.
• Obtain permission for all fully borrowed, adapted, and modified tables and provide a credit line in the footnote.

• Upload the images in JPEG format. The file size should be within 1024 kb in size while uploading.
• Number all figures in the order of their citation in the text.
• Include a title for each figure (no longer than 15 words). Titles and detailed explanations belong to the figure legends, not on the illustrations themselves.
• Multi-panel figures (for example Fig. 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d) should be submitted as a single composite file that contains all parts of the figure.
• Labels, numbers, and symbols should be clear and of uniform size. The lettering for figures should be large enough to be legible after reduction to fit the width of a printed column.
• Figure titles and legends should be provided in the main manuscript, not in the graphic file.
• The photographs and figures should be trimmed to remove all the unwanted areas.

• All figures must have Arabic numbers corresponding to the illustrations (i.e., Fig. 1, 2, 3 etc.).
• Short title of figure (maximum 15 words).
• Supply a detailed explanation of each figure (maximum length, 40 words).
• Define all symbols and arrows that are used to identify parts of the figures.
• Explain internal scale and identify the method of staining in photomicrographs.

Patient Anonymity and Informed Consent

It is the author's responsibility to ensure that a patient’s anonymity be carefully protected, and to verify that any experimental investigation with human subjects reported in the manuscript was performed with informed consent and following all the guidelines for experimental investigation with human subjects required by the institution(s) with which all the authors are affiliated. Authors should mask patients' eyes and remove patients' names from figures unless they obtain written consent from the patients and submit written consent with the manuscript.

Sending Revised Manuscript

The revised version of the manuscript should be submitted online in a manner similar to that used for submission of the manuscript for the first time. When submitting a revised manuscript, authors are requested to include, the ‘referees’ remarks along with point to point clarification. In addition, they are expected to mark the changes as highlighted text in the article.

Accepted Manuscripts

After a manuscript is accepted for publication in North American Journal of Medical Sciences, the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is used to cite and link to the electronic documents. The assigned DOI never changes, and it is an ideal medium for citing a document. The correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows:

doi: 10.4297/najms.2011.3400

When you use the DOI to look for the documents on the web, the DOIs are guaranteed never to change. The assigned DOI for the North American Journal of Medical Sciences is: Doi 10.4297.

Proofs

The designated corresponding author will receive notification of availability of page proofs by e-mail. It is the author's responsibility to ensure that there are no errors in the proofs. Proofs must be checked carefully and corrections sent back within 48 hours of receipt, as requested in the electronic cover letter accompanying the page proofs.